Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  One particularly bloodthirsty tribe was that of the Tenebro Indians who occupied for various periods modern day Rockbridge and Westbridge Counties. They are best known for having been wiped out by the Catawba on the eve of the French and Indian War. The Tenebro were mainly hunters, and lived for a while in peace with fur traders who passed through this ridge of the valley. But they evidently had one habit that the other Indians of the time, the Senedos, Tuscarora, and Shawnee, found repulsive, and so when the Catawba massacred the tribe as they crossed the mountains to the west of the county, no tears were shed, either among the whites or among the Tenebro's Indian brothers.

  The Tenebro celebrated a winter festival, when they felt the rebirth of some Great Spirit was imminent, either symbolically or in actuality. Many men died for sport during this festival, when the shaman would perform his Ghost Dance for the tribe, and the bones of the dead were exhumed for their descendants to carry as they followed the shaman in his dance. Thus came the nickname among tribes for the Tenebro: Men-of-Bone. Less obvious is their totem, the maggots, which they held sacred for the invertebrates' ability to clean the corpses after the exhumation. But at the end of this week-long dance and feast, the shaman would choose a maiden and a brave to represent the twin aspects of the deity. It is presumed that a ceremony of sorts, perhaps a fertility rite, took place. A great cannibalistic blood feast would follow, in which prisoners, white men in particular, were torn limb-from-limb and eaten without benefit of fire. Of course, these stories come to us primarily through tales from such marginally reliable men as William Parsifal in his 1826 History of the Shenandoah, and we must keep in mind he was writing seventy years after the Tenebro were wiped out completely. Other sources are perhaps even less reliable; supposed unnamed eyewitness accounts appear in the County Register of 1756, but hatred of the Indian was at an all-time high in that year because of the frequent unprovoked attacks upon townships (including the burning of our own first town of Pontefract, not two miles from the present location—an act of arson which apparently was committed by our forefathers themselves because of fear of an outbreak of some cholera-type plague from the use of tainted drinking water).

  The Tenebro, and their mysterious rituals which even the most violent tribes feared, are gone from this earth. The present day excavation on the shores of Clear Lake, which was undertaken with a grant from the Virginia Society for Historical Preservation, has not only uncovered relics of the first town of Pontefract, but also evidence of a Tenebro burial mound.

  Chapter Two

  CUP: THE PAST

  1

  From The Nightmare Book of Cup Coffey:

  What I remember of December 18, 1974, is not as vague as I'd like it to be. I would like to say I was younger then, only a child, but that is as weak an excuse as any. But I was younger then, and childhood had only visibly turned to adolescence—inside, in my heart of hearts, I was just a boy with a crush on a girl.

  And I was willing to protect her from anything.

  That winter at Pontefract Prep, before Christmas break, I tried. I know that's what I was doing, trying to protect her. But how foolish and gallant and tragic it became.

  The night of my initiation.

  You see, we had clubs, we called them tribes, sort of junior fraternities. We took the names of various Indian tribes of the region, and through them, formed our cliques. These were our forums for mild rebellions, getting seniors to buy beer, all the early male bonding rituals. The club I was in took its name from local Indians called the Tenebro, but we were just adolescent white boys out for a good time at a boarding school.

  2

  "This winter would be unbearable without you," Lily told him, "but I'm not sure I like this initiation business, I mean, really, Cup, bones and bourbon. Don't you think you and your little friends should grow up?" She kept her voice to a whisper, and she patted the top of his head as if he were a puppy crouched down there behind the kitchen door, spying on the party.

  Lily brushed her fingers through her shiny blond hair, and it crackled with static electricity. "That's what I get for rubbing your scalp—now I'll look like Medusa when I take the canap s out."

  Cup grinned from where he huddled and winked at her. "Turn 'em to stone." His legs were beginning to cramp from that position and he wished she'd just get out there, grab the bottle and get back with it so he could get the hell out of the Marlowe-Houston House. If he were to be caught

  "What can you possibly see from down there, anyway? Women's panties?" Lily headed for the refrigerator. She opened it and pulled out a tray full of hors d'oeuvres, and then nudged the door shut.

  "Come on, Lily," Cup whispered.

  She put her finger to her lips to shush him and carried the tray into the living room. The kitchen door swung shut behind her. Cup had to push it forward a bit so he could see more than just the back of some teachers' pants as they huddled around the piano while someone, very drunk, played a rather original rendition of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

  But the music stopped suddenly when a snowball hit the front picture window with a loud mush! and then dropped into the snow-covered bushes below, out of view. Its icy, dirty imprint remained like that of a child's palm pressed against the glass.

  Cup saw Gower Lowry, the head of the English Department, duck as if the snowball was meant for him, and then try to make it seem as if he were merely bending over to check his shoelaces. The other teachers around the piano continued their drinking and buzzing conversations. Dr. Cammack, Pontefract Prep's headmaster, raised his glass of sherry to the frosted window, "To the spirit of youth, shall we say?" This was followed by obligatory laughter from the faculty.

  "One of those Indian clubs," someone suggested. "What do they call themselves? Tribes?"

  "No, I think the Potomacs or Sioux or something," said a woman, who stood out of Cup's field of vision.

  "Tuscarora, Catawba, and Tenebro," Dr. Prescott Nagle corrected them, and although Cup could not see Dr. Nagle clearly, only a bit of his reflection in the picture window, he could tell from his voice that he was nervous—as though unsure of his own subject, history. "I believe the Tuscarora make up most of the lacrosse team. And the Tenebro—well, I suppose since the boys consider it their secret, I should leave it at that."

  Cup heard Mr. Lowry whisper, "Old Bagel is an expert on everything these days. Always digging around," and a woman chuckled at this. Gower Lowry, whom Cup could see the most clearly, then wagged his head from side to side; although in his mid-fifties, he had already Grecian-formulaed his hair into a peculiar metallic red. He hunched his shoulders up and thrust his hands stiffly into the pockets of his herringbone tweed jacket. Now Cup could see him in profile, and for just an instant Lowry resembled a vulture sitting high on some craggy peak looking down upon a dying animal, waiting for his chance. "I think we know who's responsible for such mischief." Then turning to nod almost defiantly at Dr. Nagle, he continued, "And who encourages it out of an unprofessional and desperate attempt at 'popularity.' This school needs a clean sweep, can't have rotten apples in the barrel, I always say. And inside those that appear shiny and edible lurks the worm of corruption. By that I mean one Mr. Coff—"

  Dr. Cammack set his sherry glass down hard upon the side table like a judge hammering his gavel for silence in the court.

  Lowry pretended not to notice. "—ffey," he completed his statement, and Cup winced when he heard his own last name mentioned. Cup let the door shut completely and looked up at the ceiling, his eyes welling with tears. This confirmed his fears that the faculty talked about him, about what happened during semester finals. He felt doomed. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and touched the prize he'd wrestled from a dog that evening. No matter what they did to him after Christmas break, he still had this night, initiation.

  He took a deep breath and opened the door a crack. He heard the tail end of what Dr. Cammack was saying, "and I think, Gower, you are, perhaps, violating the confidentiality of quite another matter."r />
  Under his breath, Gower Lowry mumbled, "Headmasters should not play favorites." But this comment was lost among the clinking glasses, the intermittent chuckles and "ahems" that punctuated the several conversations going around the room.

  From where Cup was crouching, he could only see a vertical rectangle of the Marlowe-Houston House's living room. The back of Dr. Cammack's head, Dr. Nagle's arm when it flailed out as he was telling a story, the back edge of the sleek black piano, five teachers gathered around the piano (he mainly only saw their trouser legs, they were so close to the kitchen door). But he could not see Lily at all. The plan had been that she would go directly to the bar, and when she saw that no one was looking, she'd grab the bottle and walk back to the kitchen with it.

  Dr. Cammack looked to his left, out of Cup's range of vision. "Lily, could you bring out some dean glasses? I think we've run through here and Bob Reed seems to think he needs another sip."

  Other voices, near the piano:

  "I thought you said there'd be a major spread here. I skipped dinner for this hamster food?"

  "There's your major spread."

  "Cammack's daughter?"

  "Odds on she's a virgin?"

  "Not the way Lowry is going after her. Look at the way his eyes follow her."

  "Don't be ridiculous—he's too busy planning to make the evening miserable for Pres Nagle, did you notice that snippy comment he made about teachers and popularity? Lowry does have it in for the old guy, doesn't he? "

  "I saw you, the way you put your hand on that Cammack girl's shoulder "

  Cup could not make out who the teachers were that were saying all this, but it made him angry to think they'd talk about Lily the way they did.

  Then Lily came back into view, heading toward the kitchen with a tray of empty glasses.

  Cup sat back, allowing the kitchen door to shut all the way.

  In another moment, Lily Cammack stepped back into the kitchen.

  She set the tray with the glasses across a cutting board near the oven. Then she returned to where Cup sat and offered her hand to him; he took it, and repressing a groan, stood up. Neither of them spoke as she led him to the far side of the kitchen. "This is boring, and I can't get to the whiskey," she finally whispered.

  "Did you hear Lowry?"

  "How could I not? You mean about you, well, he's just an old goat who's always looking to butt heads. He always has it in for somebody, doesn't he? "

  "Yeah, only it's my butt he'd like to butt right out of here."

  "Keep your voice down. Poor baby," she whispered. She drew Cup's face toward her own. Her lips brushed across his and pressed against his cheek.

  "Can we hurry this along?" Cup murmured, and felt suddenly intoxicated, not from the sherry she'd given him earlier, but by her jasmine perfume which seemed so unwinterish and yet fit her perfectly. "I'm-I'm going to be in hot water if—"

  She gave him another peck on the cheek. "How hot can it get?" She brought her face back and her mood darkened. "It's this stupid Tenebro initiation. Don't you think your little clubs are silly? They aren't really fraternities, are they? Just excuses for getting drunk and acting juvenile. What's the point of going through with this if you might not even be here next semester?"

  Cup shrugged. "Nothing to lose, I guess."

  "Life and limb. Really, Cup, digging up bones and stealing liquor. How attractive. How mature. You owe me one. You still want the bottle?"

  He glared sarcastically. "What do you think?"

  "Well, Daddy will do his little toast number any minute, and then I'll grab it."

  "So dramatic. Why can't you just get it now? I got to take a leak."

  "Tie a knot in it," she said playfully. She went to the cupboard for clean sherry glasses and Cup helped her arrange them on a silver tray. "Was it your little gang that threw that snowball earlier, Cup? Or do I dare attribute it to your best friend, ha ha, Bart?"

  3

  From The Nightmare Book of Cup Coffey:

  I was only sixteen and I had never before cheated on a test—God's honest truth. May He strike me dead. I panicked so much over that damn chemistry test and I was caught cheating, stupidly, stupidly, my own mistake, poor execution, "dishonorably," as Lowry put it. Caught by that devil Bart Kinter.

  I have a theory now, looking back on that cheating episode of December, 1974: those who get caught at anything only do so because someone is out to get them. A lot of people don't get caught. But I did.

  I was aware that more than a few of my fellow students at Pontefract Prep cheated. Constantly. I watched one of my former roommates scribbling notes for an upcoming English Lit test onto the seat of his desk with a ballpoint pen. No, I take that back, he didn't just scribble, he engraved. I saw my Tenebro Blood Brother with crib notes for the French final. Thad Stamp, III, had even gone so far as to set a whole slew of three-by-five cards on his lap while he took the World History midterm. He forgot those cards at the end of the test. He stood up from his desk. As he stood, those index cards filled with arcane doodlings about Huguenots and the Hundred Years War flew like a magician's white doves across the classroom. But Thad Stamp, III, was not turned in to the vicious and unyielding Honor Council. Oh, no. Old Bagel, as we called Dr. Nagle, was absorbed in one of his textbooks. He didn't notice those telltale cards scattered across the floor, even while Thad went around and collected them. Thad Stamp, III, aced the World History midterm and destroyed all hopes the rest of us had for some kind of curve. All it would've taken was one, "J'accuse."

  But there were no takers.

  I, on the other hand, did get caught. Did get turned in.

  What separated me from students like Thad Stamp, III?

  What mark of Cain did I bear?

  Someone had it in for me. As Lily used to say, my best friend, ha ha, Bart Kinter.

  Bart Kinter was a senior, a towhead from the neighboring town of Cabelsville. He was only admitted to Pontefract Prep because he was somehow related to one of its founders (you know, all those backwoodsmen intermarried and created three-toed babies, albinos, and the likes of Bart Kinter). He was what you call a legacy student. Wouldn't you know it? He was also "Chief" of the Catawba tribe, a campus club that boasted more bullies than Teddy Roosevelt. He was what guidance counselors politely referred to as a "disciplinary problem," because even teachers, you know, are afraid of some students.

  He was the oldest senior the school had, weighing in at nineteen years old. But you'd never know it to talk to him.

  And Bart Kinter had it in for me.

  I think there are some people in a given lifetime who are natural born enemies. It might have something to do with an incompatible smell, or something rotten you detect in the other guy's eyes. Somehow you know when you meet that you will never get along.

  Kinter and I were of this variety. There was nothing I did not loathe about him. Not his pug little nose that was eternally dripping, not his slit green eyes, not those warped apricot ears that burst with fur in the winter when he forgot to clip back the hair. That sniggering, adenoidal way of speaking. He reminded me of one of those little plastic trolls that girls play with and think are so adorable, when we all know they're as ugly as sin.

  Oh, and permit me to mention one other thing Kinter possessed: the talent for inspiring fear. I can admit that now. Fear. Plain and simple, with no logic to back it up. Just fear.

  Initially when I was just entering my freshman year at school, I thought Bart Kinter disliked me because there really was something wrong with me (maybe I did smell bad; I only washed my socks every third week). But you can only believe something like that for so long before you've got to sit back and say, "Fuck it," and get on with life.

  And admit, if the truth be known, the guy's a creep.

  This was a revelation to me.

  How it happened, the cheating episode, involving my best friend, ha ha, Bart Kinter. This is as close to a play-by-play as I can come:

  I'm in one of the three main examination room
s. A test is usually administered in one of the ordinary classrooms. But for the end-of-term exams, they really like to stick it to you, both physically and psychologically. Every piece of furniture in the designated exam room is dark, hard, wooden. You are forced to sit in the kind of chair that will, in later life, result in hemorrhoids. You are supervised not by teachers but by Proctors. A Proctor is usually a student-teacher from one of the local colleges who is incapable of answering questions that might arise while you take the exam.

  Why is it that whenever you take a test, your senses sharpen like the tip of your Number 2 pencil, and you hear people in the world, laughing, perhaps out ice skating on the lake, or making a snowman near the footbridge? And dogs—do they only bark and race across campus during exams? You smell every hickory-smoke fire from every chimney in town. You take time to analyze, for sentence structure, the obscene graffiti about donkey genitalia on your desktop, and read the braille of dried chewing gum on the desk's underside.

  My real best friend, Whit, sits across from me and looks earnest and scholarly. He is prepared. Unlike me.

  I scan the exam. It looks like a very bad recipe. Haiku in the original Japanese. Chemistry for me is when two people get together and make sparks: Bogie and Bacall, Catherine the Great and her unholy mule (back to donkey genitals). And Lab? Well, I like to think of Lab as a kind of furry, dark dog with a pleasant personality.

  I glance over to Whit for help, but Whit is no cheater, no passer of notes. How could I expect him to be? Had I sunk so low that I would do that to my best friend? How could I even be a cheater, Malcolm Coffey, called "Cup" by one and all? I am an okay student, never honor roll material, but then, hey, who needs it?

  No, I'm no cheater.

  But I am up against some tough competition here, not only the other students, but also that invisible competition my parents often mention: